Recently I upgraded my eReader to one with a larger screen and, like other eReaders I’ve owned, this one came with a selection of public domain works. In this case, one of the works was The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, by some guy nobody has ever heard of.
Sadly, the book does not include any of Poe’s excellent songs.
Of course, I’ve read many of Poe’s stories and poems before, but not for a long time, and I’ve never had them all collected in one place. This edition includes a number of stories I haven’t read before, including a couple about balloon trips, one allegedly to the moon (which is in fact describing a hoax) and one across the Atlantic Ocean. So apparently Poe was interested in ballooning. I’m guessing he also liked dogs.
“Never mind,” said he at length, “this will answer;” and he drew from his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap, and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this, I retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received it, a loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in, leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown him much attention during previous visits.
Lots of things have changed since the 1840s, but not the behavior of dogs.
Meanwhile, speaking of hauntings, editing continues on―you guessed it!―Father’s Books. This is almost certainly probably maybe the last pass, aside from at least one more to look for typos, and I’m near the end of the book so it’s difficult to find a paragraph without at least some spoilers. With that in mind, here’s a slightly edited teaser from the current scene I’m working on:
They rolled into the parking lot without incident and pulled up alongside the building, driving into the hazy glow of the porch lights. She leaned forward over the bench seat and got her best view yet of the apparition of the old man, thin, pinched, pickled, with a haggard and exhausted face. The upper half of his body was bare, shriveled skin stretched over a rickety framework of ribs and collarbones, thin grey hair smeared across the chest, man-breasts sagging toward the indistinct lower half of his body, which was a geometric jumble suggesting bunched corpse-wrap that spread like sheeting to catch paint or other, less savory fluids.
Oh yeah. Nothing like having a ghost riding shotgun.
Viscosity 
Stronger reading glasses would have been cheaper…
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